Make my fancy personal laptop a dumb terminal to my small screen work laptop?

[karenewienecke]

Hello, Community. My work laptop that I can use at home through VPN is a small screen, older style ThinkPad running on Windows XP Professional. My personal laptop at home is a nice, new, fancy HP running on Windows 7 Home version. I'd love to connect these two laptops to each other -- and either through hardware or software -- have my fancy HP laptop essentially be a dumb terminal to my work laptop when the two are connected to each other. I don't think PCAnywhere can do quite what I want because I need for my Windows 7 personal laptop to act as if it's simply a different display for my Windows XP work laptop. Ideas?

 

[Saga Lout]

Hello, Community. My work laptop that I can use at home through VPN is a small screen, older style ThinkPad running on Windows XP Professional. My personal laptop at home is a nice, new, fancy HP running on Windows 7 Home version. I'd love to connect these two laptops to each other -- and either through hardware or software -- have my fancy HP laptop essentially be a dumb terminal to my work laptop when the two are connected to each other. I don't think PCAnywhere can do quite what I want because I need for my Windows 7 personal laptop to act as if it's simply a different display for my Windows XP work laptop. Ideas?

I don't think it could be done without showing up at the other end. Why not buy a keyboard, mouse and monitor to make you think the Thinkpad is bigger and more highly specified if it's the one you spend most time working on?

 

[eibgrad]

I don't use pcAnywhere myself (I used to years ago), but I don't see why it wouldn't work. Isn't that exactly what remote access does, allows you to control (in this case) the Thinkpad (the host) from the HP (the remote client)? The HP is just a window into the desktop of the Thinkpad. I do this everyday, control the various PCs around the home/office from my own personal PC, but using VNC (works great and it's free).

 

[Catsrules]

you have XP Pro on the work laptop. Well XP pro happens to support Remote desktop connections, and win 7 home happens to support being able to connect to a Remote desktop. All you need to do it to (on work laptop) right click on my computer/properties/Remote/Check allow users to connect remotely to this computer (NOT remote assistant that is different). Make sure your use account has access to remote desktop connection,if your account on the computer is a Administrator I think you will already have access by default. Now click on Computer Name tap, and wright down the Full Computer name. Then go to your home laptop and search for Remote desktop connections. type in the name of your laptop and click connect, if it works log in with your user name and password and your done. If it doesn't work I would use the IP address of your work laptop instead of the name.
Any questions fell free to ask

 

[karenewienecke]

I don't think it could be done without showing up at the other end. Why not buy a keyboard, mouse and monitor to make you think the Thinkpad is bigger and more highly specified if it's the one you spend most time working on?

That's just it, I don't want to buy even more equipment if there's a way to simply connect the two pieces of equipment I've already got together, i.e., the two laptops I've already got.

 

[Catsrules]

Like I said Remote desktop, also know as Terminal services in the win server world. AKA dumb terminal

 

[Saga Lout]

Like I said Remote desktop, also know as Terminal services in the win server world. AKA dumb terminal

It's a good idea but I still think it will ring alarm bells in the major remote system by splitting the signal through two IP addresses. It will be interesting to see the results of an experiment but I think the OP should refer it to her systems admin folk first.[/#000ff]

 

[Guest]

Best answer selected by fihart.